Empire versus Empire A Post-Communist

LIBELLI FATA sua habent – the fate of books that announce the end ofhistory, as does Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000), is to be swallowedin their own apocalypse. The deployment of American commercial airliners to strike down the World Trade Center on September 11 2001 also achieved more or less than Osama bin Laden may have entertained. It certainly struck at the heart of American Empire – reversing its own prac-tices of violation whenever its imperial interests are at stake. Just previ-ously, America had been prepared to go it alone in space, embarking on new star wars, and on earth continuing a defiantly self-interested and anti-ecological energy policy. The blow to America’s commercial heartland, however, produced a hurried US realignment of international forces and a rebirth of American nationalism and familism in a civilized front against barbarism. The Evil of terrorism now overshadows the domestic politics of class, gender and race, which are reduced to the preoccupations of the morally shortsighted. Into this imperial context – since it is the fate of books, whether philosophical or not, always to arrive late – there steps Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000) – of all things, a postmodern, post-imperial commu-nist manifesto. Born out of the Spinozan or schizoid suspension of all previous systems of right and left domination and their limited counter-cultures of emancipation. The choice we are offered is between terrorism and poetry. The terrorist bombards people, who are confined, driving them into the black hole of misery, whereas the poet releases the people to become a multitude with hope, expanding into the cosmos (Deleuze and Guattari, 1991: 345). Because the American Empire is now allegedly total and universal, it must breed its own transformation towards universal humanitarianism. Thus Empire is a postal machine, sending and receiving its own message. It